Gartner's iPhone, Android predictions radically revised in a year and a half - Page 3

This post proves only one thing. You're just as poor as him, or even poorer.
Read the article.

The fact that you're an astroturfer was not an ad hominem, just an observation. Even a simple insult, of the form: "Your argument is wrong, and oh yes, you're a jerk" is not an ad hominem. The ad hominem fallacy is of the form: "You're a jerk, therefore your argument is wrong."

The iPhone 3GS is still being sold, and it's a two-year-old design. They're having to give away current Android phones, and there are NO two-year-old Android phones on the market, even for free, so I don't know what you think your argument is.

3GS here is, at least, $399.
Point me to where to get free 3GS without pricey contract.

Point me to where to get a free Android phone without a contract.

IPad "Redefining Computing."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...computing.html

Apparently their analysis was worth listen to there.

And Here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...r_company.html

And Here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...s_in_2014.html

And Here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...7_million.html
--Wait, this one actually calls Gartner into doubt... So why does AI keep posting their predictions like they mean anything?

And- Well, you get the picture.

Now, I agree that the analyst is trash. All tech analysts are because they haven't been right on anything tech related in years because they're still using the old model. But it's kind of ironic that AI is so quick to post Gartner's numbers and all their predictions that put Apple in a positive light, but now that those flawed analysts are choosing a new rising star (be it microsoft or Android or someone else) now AI is finally calling them out as shams.

Good data is good data, and bad data is bad data, no matter how much you like/dislike what it says.

Gartner is trash. I know this, you know this (and you've said as much here). So I expect this will be the LAST post on here with a prediction by Gartner where AI is putting at least a tagline linking to this article, no matter if the new prediction is pro-Apple or not.

You are missing his point, srathi. I suppose it is on purpose, but I will restate it for him in hopes of ending this:
Apple's aged 3GS is still valued by customers such that they are willing to sign up for a pricy long term contracts to get one (or pay hundreds to get one contract free). He wants to know what Android phones of a similar age command the same commercial interest?

The answer is, of course, none.

I can point you to the fact that here we don't have a contract. Most of Android phones are selling, lets be generous here, less than half of even 3GS. You could even find some at as low as $100.00. If you think Android phones are on the same playing field as iPhone price-wise then you're deluding yourself.
I took a picture of Android phone price once for a laugh. Let me see if I could find it.
Of course there's some hardcore group of people that will buy an expensive Android phone but they are a very small minority.

Thank you, Bageljoeylucid indeed.

I'm not missing his point. People are still buying 3GS because it is available for free compared to $200 for iPhone 4. You are just interpreting it your way.

Android companies follow a traditional phone cycle, which is that a cellphone will only last 9-12 months before it's replaced. You don't see a company keeping around a 2 year old phone because they have 5 current model phones, with the entry level model being more powerful than anything released last year, let alone 2 years ago. There's no point. It's an apple's to oranges comparison.

If Apple offered customers a cheaper way to get iOS than a 3GS, the 3GS wouldn't be around either. It still exists because it's the only way to get an iOS device that's not a top of the line model. Again, apple's to oranges. It's two totally different ways of doing business.

Then you look at the technology involved. 2 years ago, the "Best" android phone was something like the HTC Hero, which had a 400ish MHz processor, a low res screen, and entry level ram/hardly any app space. Last year at this time, the phone to beat would be the upcoming Evo, and it was competing with the Nexus/Droid Incredible. Which had a GHz processor.

By the time the original droid is 2 years old, the average Android device will have 2+ cores clocked at a gig, capable of HD output/recording, significantly faster Data networks ("4G" om every variation), Super high res screens, and who knows what OS.

No, specs arn't everything, but it's clear to see that, for better or worse, the hardware on android devices has evolved in such a way that having a 2 year old phone wouldn't make sense, especially since you can make that same phone cheaper and rebrand it as entry level if you want.

They're actually the majority. Super cheap android devices are still rather new. They didn't start popping up until last fall, and with how cheap high end devices are in the US on contract, most people go with that if for nothing else than the bragging rights of having the latest and greatest. Android is still Strongest in the US/Europe, where higher end phones hold sway.

You're more likely to see a Desire or a Optimus2x than you are a Zio.

The first time I saw it is April last year. I know because it's an annual event. They're all are at half-price at 3GS.

Oh and how do you know higher end Android phone hold sway? Do you have any hard data to back this up? Units sold of each Android phones in Europe?

What was the phone?

Because according to CNN, the first $100 phone didn't pop up until this past december: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/...android-phone/

Though it appears there was a Rebranded version of it launched in Africa earlier that year (September) But I can only find blog posts on it. From the looks of it though, it was the same exact phone.

I just can't bother to remember it frankly. And no I don't talk about $100 phones I'm talking about half-price-of-3GS phone, $200 price range.

Even at $200, you couldn't find many phones last spring that fell near that price unless you were looking at very cheap Chinese models that may or may not have the full android market. (several chinese companies have a fork of Android that's popular, but they don't have Android Market access)

But even so, most of the phones right now running android are middle quality (300-400+) or higher. I'd argue that most in the US are a lot higher. You're more prone to see an Evo/Droidx/Droid than you are a Devour/Zio/Comet. And remember, even a "bargin" bin phone like the LG Optimus T/V/S etc is a more powerful phone than the Droid, which was the most powerful android device to come out a little under 2 years ago. Again, tech has evolved very quickly.

They were all advertised to be Android phones. Big fat green robot on all the posters. Oh and Google TM also.
Give me hard data please. Sale number between high-end Android phones compare to middle-end, for example. I never see anyone provide such a data. All we have is the whole unit sales.

Notice now when the fragmentation of the Android market serves his argument, it exists, but when he wants to add up all these devices into a dominant, world-beating "Android Market", then they're all the same.

Indeed.

I doubt anyone pays Gartner for their "research." Cheaper and more accurate to call Miss Cleo the psychic.
("Call me now for your free reedin!")

So, there are only two ways for Gartner to make money:

1. Microsoft pays Gartner to cheerlead for them. Makes Gartner look like a bunch of shills, but
money is money. Microsoft makes piles of cash milking their legacy WIndows + Office customers,
and they aren't shy about dumping truckloads of benjamins on public relations disasters like WP7.

2. Other tech companies pay Gartner to leave them the f_ck alone. As in "We'll pay you to not
write about us. A glowing report from you bozos is the kiss of death."

Bad feng shui all around.

Actually, when you're talking world marketshare, devices without android market are not counted as "android" by most companies, and certainly not by google. I've also argued that Fragmentation isn't an issue (when you're talking the traditional sense, as in different versions of Google tracked android) at least nowhere near what you and others are implying. The fact remains that over 90% of the apps will work on every android device out there, with the main compatibility issues coming from a mere 6% of devices. Android is not, as you say, incompatible because different companies make it. The only time this is the case is if it's a forked version of Android. Then it's incompatible because they've made the code their own.

But I don't expect you'd get that. To you, everyone who dares to question apple is most likely the same person anyway, right?

As for hard data on sales numbers, if you (matrix) can't be bothered to remember the name of a phone you saw, Why should I waste my time doing your job for you by using Google?

Here's something that came up after 10 seconds: (Granted, this is just a survey done by Admob, and it's US companies.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/...rules-android/

HTC Dream=G1
HTC Magic (mytouch 3g)
HTC Hero was a mid-high end phone when it came out, even though the hardware was older.
Eris is a Hero, still cost 400,

At the time of the survay (last June) 67% of all android devices were in north america. They seemed to have counted the chinese fork as Android, because it accounted for 13% of their survey. Over 80% of Android devices in their results (over 12 million devices) were from HTC or Motorola, and neither company makes a "bargain" full retail phone. Even a POS like the devour is 400 retail.

What you call Fragmentation, and what most people call fragmentation differs greatly.

You yourself admitted a while back that there were seven different versions of Android out there in the wild, and when you cross that with dozens of different manufacturers adding their proprietary crap on top of that, it's a madhouse. You can deny it all you want, but that's the situation.

I question Apple all the time. For example, their pushing of download-only media and software access is decades premature.

Hard data please. Sale number like we know how many iPhone sold on financial report, not survey. Why is it so hard to find I just don't understand??? It'll be benefit us all and prove your point greatly.

Per the six-degrees of separation theory, everyone on this thread is connected to a combined total of 3 people who own WP7 devices.

What? Apple shouldnt sell or rent media on iTunes Store until at least 2031 or Apple should also issue physical media under its name? How does that apply to apps?

I mean it will be decadesmany decadesbefore a large enough majority of people have the kind of super-high-speed internet service to make their vision of a wireless world a reality. We don't all live on the Cupertino campus, you know. In the meantime, many, many people will be left out of this utopia.

That’s what I don’t get your comment, it’s a reality right now and has been for a long time. It’s not an all or nothing shift to the internet. Years after DVDs became the most common you could still buy VHS tapes. Sony just stopped producing 3.5” floppy disks last year. Who is being left out that makes it premature for Apple to have started the iTunes Music Store in 2003, which is the single largest supplier of music in the world. Who is being left out that makes it premature for Netflix to streaming media, which has seen phenomenal growth with a decline in shipped DVDs.

Paradigm shifts can happen quickly that it seems like there is some toggle switch being moved but usually it’s a gradual slider from one model to the other. Just like B/W TV adoption, then color TV adoption, then cable TV adoption, then home computer adoption, followed by internet adoption, et al. there is a trend from none to ubiquity. Each one of the examples above surely had people saying that the technology was premature, but without these premature users the tech would have never become ubiquitous (I.e.: mature).

Shhh... All they care about it that they are "winning".
And that Apple has "lost" again.

Funny how definitions of winning and losing can vary so dramatically.

The issue is not what the OS is called, it is that there are massive incompatibilities. There were phones shipped in 2010 with Android 1.6 and will never be upgraded. Hardware capabilities are all over the map. The features of 2.2 are interesting, but no one who wants to reach an audience can develop to them.

The only Denial are the people pretending that market share in it's current form means anything at all for android. No manufacturers combined Android sales exceed the sales of the iPhone. Despite the Android market share advantage they still have nearly 0 market for Apps. For a platform that you believe is equal or larger than iOS for all of 2010, it generated 1/17th the App revenue (100 million versus 1.7 billion) and less then 1/6th the year-over-year growth. If we are comparing platform size, the only reason at all is because of what this offers developers. Any reasonable person can see android is still a failure as a mobile app platform.

Where do you get the free Android phones from? All the ones I have seen are tied to expensive contracts, that's not free.

Are people here really that uneducated when it comes to the monetisation of Android?

Lesson:
Android at the source is free. It costs nothing to compile and distribute Gningerbread to every manufacturer, this is true.

Now we come into the realm of monetization of Android with the closed source components (Google apps). This is what caused Google to isue a C&D on the team at CyanogenMod who were distributing ROMS with the non-open Google apps without a licence to do so:

http://android-developers.blogspot.c...r-android.html

This means that EVERY licensed Android phone sold with the Google Apps have been distributed thanks to these "business deals" which undoubtedly cost OEM's to include with the "free" OS.

Hopefully this will educate some but I guess it will be ignored by most.



You are concerned for the 3.5% of current Android market share that are on 1.6? How noble of you. Source

Grouping the market share of Moto, LG, HTC and Samsung and calling it Android is bull****!
Google is getting all the props but the balance sheets of the aforementioned celly makers aren't on Google's CFO's desk!
Android is a free mobile OS piggybacking on ubiquitous 3rd party hardware.
And there are two business models at play here.
One is Google making money on ads from Android and two is the selling of hardware by the celly makers.
I'm going to write the chairmen of the SEC because this is some seriously misleading bull****!
Investors looking at this sh** will think Google is winning when they are not, per se.Google's stock could rise because of this if it hasn't already and that is sad because Google doesn't take action at all covering anything that happens to your Android powered phone.
You have to break each 3rd party player using Android down and then asses them.
Apple is winning. They design their hardware, they wrote their own mobile OS, they use their own custom silicon and they advertise their cell phone. All of this is done in house entirely by one company. And that is risky but the markets reward risk. Apple is clearly the winner hands down.

Oh and to add a little bit of pepper jack to the mix, I have heard rumors that facebook was working on their own mobile OS. So just allow your imagination to run wild a bit on that one.
Can you imagine...

Giving large units of multiple products away that contain variants (most unrecognisable) of the 'same' OS in order to increase market share is not "outselling" - it's giving something away and is a route to insolvency.

You can't compare actual sales of a single current model phone to dozens of cheap handsets/models that are simply given away. That these dozens of phones have between managed to about match actual SALES of iPhones, (not to mention iPads and iPod touches which aren't included in these figures) renders the "outselling iOS" statement utter nonsense.

Where are the SALES figures, the PROFIT announcements - this is business, and money matters. Not getting your product into the hands of many people as possible while bringing in zero revenue.

Heres is one profit announcement: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7371GE20110408

EDIT:

Out of interest, can you (or one of the above) please point me in the direction where this hardware is given away scot free? (Not free hardware that is subsidised by a service plan, just the 100% free phones). I want in on the action.

Thanks.

You proved his point. HTC made a profit on the devices they sold.

Apple and HTC are certainly competing with other for sales, but iOS and Android are not competing for HW installations because 1) Apple doesnt license or give away iOS and 2) they certainly wont use Android on their HW.

How have I proven his point? To me it seems he/she was working on the basis that Android handsets are given away for absolutely nothing and are unprofitable. HTC is one such company that has had massive success, fueled by sales of its Android based hardware.

What are you after, the profitability of Google and Android OS or OEMS and Android OS?

The problems with statistics/metrics is that they can all be skewed to show different things. One Analyst went so far as to wanting to categorize the iPad as a "PC". There are so many ways to look at this and depending on what the result is, people will push their agenda..

Smartphone OS sales, iOS Vs Android as a whole, Individual handset sales by model, profitability of Android OEMS Vs Apple... All the numbers can be spun to show something different and I'll happily take them as they are instead of crying about what way of looking at it is right or wrong.

1) He responded to MacRulez silly comment, "Android is currently outselling iOS. Emphasis mine.

2) HTC has no less than 3 OSes in use but your comment seems to suggest that HTC only uses Android OS. Im sure they make most of their profit from devices running Android but that disqualifies any assumption that HTC and Android are synonymous.

3) HTC is successful because they are designing and building quality devices. Again, this shows that its HTC that is showing a marked increase in success from making good HW not simply the inclusion of Android on some of their handsets.

I am also old enough to remember the days of DR. DOS, PC DOS and MS DOS...

But the 90% penetration on the desktop is still fragmented, MS Win. Lots of Apps won't run in Vista/Win7. Or Won't run on XP [50+ % of enterprises desktops]. Or stop running after MS drops a patch... or a new version of Internet explorer .. or a new version of .Net...

So, yeah, Android is the OS. Android is a single platform with multiple UI's. And that is the major reason for it's fragmentation.

Apples 'fascist' policies on limiting developer use to only approved OS libraries prevents similar fragmentation in iOS -- for now. Soon, the performance increases in new devices, will make more taxing applications viable, which will make the 3 and 3gs incompatible, and then we have fragmentation. Or planned obsolescence - your call ;-)

For the record - I agree with Apples policies. Gartner's predictions on WinPho7 are asinine. Android is the low cost bottom feeder.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I think we all need to agree on a basic set of definitions. Android = Operating system. The article is not about the hardware, it's about the OS market share.

Android will continue to dominate, unless Nokia/HP/RIM can deliver a compelling product [hardware] that is price competitive with HTC/LG/Samsung products.

Apples piece of the pie will likely shrink, as a percentage, over the next decade. The whole smart phone category is expanding hugely. Unless Apple can figure out a way to make an iPhone that maintains the product experience and profitability, but can sell at a price point competitive in China and India, it's market share will decrease.

I would submit, that Apple will be the 'premium' brand, as they have always been. Apple has never built a model T. Nor do they build Mercedes. They build something akin to a Camry. Moderate luxury, attainable price. High profit margin.